Armed teachers is a bad idea. Let’s think this out…

Putting a gun in a teacher’s hand is wrong. Imagine you are the teacher and by some miracle you get the drop on an active shooter and you pull the trigger. What if your bullet hits a student? Bullets are powerful things, they can pass through what you are shooting and hit something on the other side, like a student. Bullets also ricochet. A ricochet bullet can kill.

Putting a gun in a teacher’s hand makes their relationship with the student different, because the teacher always has to think about the gun before the student. Stick with me on this for a minute. In some situations, the students are children, with the bodies of adults. If you are in a high school there is a potential for highly emotional exchanges with teens whose minds are still developing. High school aged kids are emotional wrecks to begin with because they do not have the life experience to deal with the changes their bodies are going through. Here is a situation that is not far fetched: Mr. Johnson is a 55 year old retired Marine who became a teacher. Since the Marines his fitness is not what it used to be and he’s got a few pounds on him. As a retired Marine he qualified to be the teacher with the concealed handgun. Tommy is an 18 year old football player who is working to get a scholarship based on his football abilities, but his grades are not where they need to be. Tommy is mad at Mr. Johnson for failing him and getting him kicked off of the football team. Is it unreasonable to think an 18 year old athlete could wrestle a handgun away from a 55 year old teacher? I don’t want to piss off my Marine friends, but I am saying that the presence of the gun changes the way Mr. Johnson will react to Tommy, and Tommy to Mr. Johnson. That is hypothetical, but not outside the realm of possibility. Let’s say that Tommy got involved with some other athletes and he’s been using steroids to get stronger for football while chasing that scholarship. Steroids often make the user short with their temper and of course stronger. Add to that the inherently unstable emotional state of your average 18 year old and Tommy is a handful. At best he is unpredictable. Again this is not outside the realm of possibility. What if it is Mrs. Johnson and she is 5’2″ and Tommy is 6’4″ ? This is just the issue of having a gun in the classroom, not the issue of an active shooter on campus.

Teachers should not have guns. It is a bad idea.